Teach me, my God and King,
— from The Elixir by George Herbert
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.
I’m writing this from Tymawr Convent, set in the beautiful countryside between Chepstow and Monmouth. My view is of wild flowers and oaks. There are house martins chuckling above my window and riding the air. I have my own space, access to Chapel, good food provided, and wi-fi. As a guest here, it is easy to see God in all things. But Tymawr is also the home of a religious community, with all that implies of the round of cooking and laundry and cleaning up after the guests (!) and doing the accounts and living with the self and others’ frailties.
God is not simply to be found in our prayer life or worship services or in reading the Bible – important as these are – but in our daily life, our relationships, work, thoughts and emotions as well. God created the world, created us, and then became one of us, fully participating in humanity and creation. Every moment in every day is an invitation to encounter the living God who wants to encounter us, and to treat everything and everyone with reverence, because (to paraphrase Julian of Norwich) God made them, God loves them, and God sustains them.
Mirabai Starr, the author, teacher and bereavement counsellor, writes of the “moments of grace [that] happen in the midst of everyday ordinary human life. Changing a diaper on a newborn grandchild will do it for me. That’s the crack that God flows into… How do the ordinary moments of your life continue to reveal the treasures of what Julian would call oneing? Oneing with God.”
Of course, not ‘all things’ are good or even ordinary. It is the way of the world that stuff happens even to the best of us. What about finding God even in our own pain and suffering? If this is you, please don’t suffer it alone; find someone to talk to, who can be alongside you. God does not send stuff to test or refine us, nor does God wave a wand to protect us from stuff, but God sustains us in all things, whether it is through others or nature or poetry or protesting in prayer. God is in it with us.
And what about the world? Can God be found in all things, when the news is so dominated by bad news? But bad news sells; there is so much more that is good. Scratch the surface of the bad, even Covid or Gaza, and there is evidence of God at work. And if you struggle to see God there, put God there in your prayer, and then God will be there. And celebrate the good.
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.
